Kevin and All,

    I didn't know that Herman Belz was a conservative.  Harry Jaffa, of 
course, was long the leader of the West Coast Straussian movement, centered 
at Claremont McKenna College.  Jaffa is a very able scholar with a 
commanding mastery of the Western intellectual tradition.  Jaffa's 
masterwork, now I think out of print, is a deep study of Lincoln's reshaping 
of American republican thought.
    Seeing Jaffa and his many students at the Claremont Colleges, where I 
lived and sometime worked in the 1970s and 80s, it was clear that a 
conservative intellectual movement was taking form.  One thing the 'right' 
and the 'left' didn't disagree on was Lincoln's principled nature.  We 
debated precisely what those principles might be but not whether they 
existed.

Harold S. Forsythe
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2007 1:26 PM
Subject: Re: Lincoln


> There are numerous good, acedmically solid books on Lincoln.
> Neither of the ones mentioned below, however, can be described
> as "definitive."
>
> If you want to read good, academically respected, solidly and
> responsibly argued analyses of Lincoln's political and
> constitutional thought, written by rock solid contemporary
> conservatives, I'd recommend the work of Herman Belz and Harry
> Jaffa.  No one can accuse Belz or Jaffa of being leftist.
> Neither of them has any patience for the notion that Lincoln
> was unprincipled, let alone a traitor to the Constitution.
>
> I should note that I based my earlier defense of Lincoln's
> constitutionalism largely on Belz' scholarship.
>
> All best,
> Kevin
>
> ---- Original message ----
>>Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2007 09:50:06 -0600
>>From: John Philip Adams <[log in to unmask]>
>>Subject: Re: Lincoln
>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>>Try these books
>>The definitive Lincoln texts are twofold:
>>Ward Hill Lamon's original biography of Lincoln and the
>>Albert Taylor Bledsoe Treatise.
>>
>>John Philip Adams
>>Texas
> Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
> Department of History
> James Madison University
>
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